


autumn's sweet, we call it fall

by easystreets



Series: North Dakota [2]
Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Don't Like Don't Read, Episode: s12e10 Dennis' Double Life, F/M, Healing, M/M, North Dakota, Post-Season/Series 12, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:40:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28267785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easystreets/pseuds/easystreets
Summary: Charlie, Dee, Frank and Mac, a year after Dennis leaving. Some things, you just can't fix.
Relationships: Charlie Kelly/Dee Reynolds, Mac McDonald/Dennis Reynolds
Series: North Dakota [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2070816
Comments: 10
Kudos: 23





	autumn's sweet, we call it fall

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I appreciate it. If you don't like Chardee, please don't read and comment mean things :( Title is from Scar Tissue by RHCP.

Dennis leaves, and pretty much nothing changes.

Sure, Mac gets more depraved, watches the sloppiest gay porn Dee’s ever heard (and living with him, sharing a bed with him, sharing a life, she’s heard a lot) and then cries afterward. He doesn’t even bother to smother it with a pillow, which is just basic crying etiquette, and frankly pathetic, but Dee can’t bring herself to make fun of his red eyes or trembling hands when he finally stumbles out of the back office. 

She can’t not say anything though, which is why she spends most of her time discussing space aliens and trashy reality TV with Charlie. It’s meaningless and hazy conversation, simple questions: _ Kim’s the biggest bitch ever, don’t you think? Would you rather live on Mars or Pluto?  _ Frank never comes in, and the kid’s gonna go crazy if he doesn’t talk to someone whose life doesn’t revolve around bridge parties, gay porn, or Bruce Willis. It’s-- it might be pathetic. But Charlie’s the closest thing she has to family, now that Dennis has up and left and fucked off to be with his stupid baby mama.

It’s whatever. They’ll get through it, drag themselves through meaningless day after day. Pour drinks and plan shitty schemes that never play out. Get fat on diner food and pot and then get thin on cigarettes and crack. Wash, rehab, repeat. 

“Do you think he’ll come back?” Charlie asks, on the second week since Dennis turned the lights out. She hasn’t been counting, not really, but the calendar is right fucking there in her mind. They haven’t spent this much time apart since-- since forever. Sure, there were week long stretches in university where they would ignore each other just for the fun of it; that time she went to rehab for six months. But he visited every damn day, and it was always Dennis who was the weaker one, who would break first-- sis, I love you; take me with you, please?

“I don’t know,” Dee says. She’s actually washing the glasses for once, scrubbing at them like they clawed her brother away to Fucktown, North Dakota, and practically enslaved him into raising a child. She hates Mandy. Mostly because Mandy is so fucking difficult to hate. She’s kind and patient in a way that none of them could ever fathom being. Pretty, too.

Suddenly, she understands why Dennis couldn’t stay. Here, beautiful things, for the most part, get drowned in a mix of glitter and vodka and lemony Pledge and bong water and their own goddamn failures until they’re ruined forever. Look at Cricket, for Christ’s sake. Goddamn Matthew Mara begging to do PCP in their bathroom. Look at Frank, who might have been the biggest piece of shit maybe ever, but, for a moment, had actually wanted to be their fucking dad, make things right. 

“Dee?” Charlie says, just as she catches her reflection in an empty shot glass. Look at herself: washed up and something turned into nothing. Mom would be so fucking proud. “Do you, like, miss him?”

“Yeah,” Dee admits, and it’s probably the worst hurt she’s ever felt, too broken to be fixed, washing glasses in a bar on a Sunday afternoon, no place to run to.

Nothing’s changed, though. He’s too ruined to last forever out there. It’s the only scant joy she gets.

* * *

Frank sleeps soundlessly on the couch, which really weirds Charlie out. Add the cats, and the beer bottles Frank leaves full of piss surrounding the bed in case of burglars, and minus the lock on the door since Hwang ripped it off, and Charlie spends most nights in Dee’s bed.

“Mac’s really fucked, don’t you think?” he says. More asks her than anything, since he’s discovered Dee likes to be asked things. This entire month of Dennis being gone has been super weird, weirder than a girl from Saturn dating an alien baby from Mars, but probably the strangest part is finding out he actually gives a shit about Dee. “I mean, we all know he was like, in L-O-V-E with Dennis.”

“You know, Charlie,” Dee says, and smiles when he spells love right. Okay. He might like, like, Dee. L-O-V-E her, maybe. His heart gets all skippy when she stares up at him from her magazine that Dennis subscribed to and never bothered cancelling. The one with all the ladies on the front that he’d cut out and draw devil faces and mustaches on. If Dee was a magazine lady he’d never draw a face on her. “I don’t give a shit about Dennis or him and Mac and their being in gay love with each other. Why should I? He doesn’t give a damn about us.” 

“He’s your twin brother.” Charlie says, because Dee is the world’s biggest fucking liar if she thinks she doesn’t care about Dennis, her only flesh and blood. How many times has he caught her crying in the shower (it’s their thing now, showering together, okay, and the showering part really isn’t that bad if the soap smells and tastes nice)? How many TVs has she smashed when the newscaster says something about the blizzards in North Dakota or how shitty the weather is (three, three that they threw from the balcony onto the road for fun, watched breathlessly as they crashed into rusty explosions of wires and shattered glass)? How many times has she called Mandy and nodded in all the right places and made happy noises on the phone (hmm, yeah, totally, no I understand) before hanging up and screaming into the sleeve of her sweater?

It’s pretty obvious Dennis and Dee love each other, in their own fucked up way. Not a Waitress type of love, where everything is intense and hurts almost, blindingly painful goodness, the way Mac says church is supposed to feel. But a weird kind of kinship, a silent connection; a total understanding of how it was like to grow up a Reynolds. Charlie watches it happen and watches Dee fall apart a little bit every day and fix herself up a bit more. She’s been doing better as the days get shorter, as all four of them sit in the kitchen and cut the sleeves off their tank tops and take a photo on Frank’s shitty sticky Kodak that he uses for upskirts. She’s actually been trying hard to make the bar like one of her girl shows, not the one with the mom and the kid who drink all that coffee, but the one where they live in New York and bang all the time that isn’t Friends.

“That doesn’t mean jack shit,” Dee says, finally, and Charlie doesn’t even know what the hell they’re talking about anymore. Not Carrie what’s-her-face, that’s for sure. He watches her flip her magazine under the yellow light of the lamp instead. Pages shellacked and loud every time she moves past an article. He hears Mac, actually working out, not just “working out”, in the living room. Frank watching T.V and yelling when the liberal BS comes on. Home sounds, happy sounds _\--flip, ten more push-ups, ten more, goddamnit this hippy bitch, flip, now you’re gonna want to bend, lower, lower, that’s it, that’s it that’s their agenda, flip_ ,-- and somehow there’s an empty black hole where Dennis would be that they’re all sitting on the edge of.

Not uncomfortable, not the gaping wound it once was, just sore. Every time they stray too far too soon, the magnetism pulls them back. Like when Charlie tried to make up a song on his piano but the chords sounded wrong and there was no Dennis to ask to dance along so he could figure out how to make the song more dancy. Or when they went to a gay bar with Mac, which was weird and a lot of guys asked Charlie if he was an otter or a spicy straight and there was no Dennis there to translate. 

He watches as she slams the magazine shut; puts it in the bookshelf besides her bed. Their bed, with the decorative pillows and absolutely zero cigarette burns or bug beds in the sheets. She doesn’t smoke anymore, at least not in the apartment and not cigarettes. Charlie doesn’t think he’ll ever quit, not now, with so many horrible things taking up the air where the space smoke isn’t, but he’s huffing glue less, which probably should count for something. 

“I miss him,” Dee finally says. She’s reaching to turn out the lamp, but her hand is practically frozen on the switch, so that the light fuzzes but doesn’t entirely dim. “He’s such a dick, but it’s just-- it’s _weird_ , isn’t it? Even if he came back now, we’d be so goddamned different it wouldn’t be the same.”

Charlie gets it. “You think we’re good different?” 

Her face falls. “I don’t know, Charlie.” He doesn’t get it. The light flicks off.

“Goodnight, Sweet Dee,” he says, snuggles under the covers. 

“Sweet Dee?” Dee says, her smile blindingly bright in the darkness. 

“He used to call you that,” Charlie mumbles. God, he’s tired. And a whole new day tomorrow: they’re getting groceries, Mac said he’d drive him to buy art supplies at a real art store, a bridge party with Frank, maybe. “‘Member?”

“Yeah,” Dee sighs, her bird face all scrunched up. “It was a dumb joke, though, Charlie. He didn’t actually think I was sweet or anything, he just thought it was funny. Everyone called me Sweet Dee,  _ Mac  _ called me Sweet Dee. It wasn’t endearing or anything.” She shakes her head. “ _Ew_.”

There’s empty nothingness. The sound of Mac showering and using all of Dee’s fancy soaps before heading back to his empty apartment for the night. Chips being crunched in the kitchen; a fan humming spring air around the room. Kids talking outside, and he was so young once. They all were.

“I think you’re sweet.” He finally says, and it’s not even a lie. She can be sweet, at least to him and only sometimes, which is really more than anyone can say. 

“Thanks, Charlie,” Dee’s voice is all cool and watery, but she squeezes his hand tight in the dark and it’s just like they’re drowning again, only this time he’s pretty sure he’ll make it out alive, prayer or no prayer.

* * *

It’s gross, is what it is.

Mac goes to church in the mornings and Sunday and Wednesday Mass and the gym after, sometimes twice a day, and then out on the weekends and he still feels like shit whenever he sees the two of them together.

It’s not fair. Charlie still hangs out with him, but he’s all hazy, and he’s no fun to talk shit with anymore. He isn’t even pissed at Dennis the way Mac is.

“Mandy called,” Mac says, when they’re driving to the movie theatre. Mac’s new car is comparatively shitty to the Range Rover, may its carcass rest in peace, and on it’s own, just a plain piece of garbage. He hates driving, wishes Dennis was there to grab the steering wheel when he veered too close to mini-vans filled with children and light his cigarettes for him while he did some totally sweet drifting on empty side streets. “She said he’s _adjusting_. What the hell does adjusting mean?”

“Can we,” Charlie bridges, his voice all buoyant, “just, like, not talk about Dennis?”

“He’s my best friend!” Mac protests, ignoring Charlie’s hurt look. Whatever. He wasn’t a fucking part of their shared life, because he was too busy being high and eating trash food with Dee and sleeping in a bed with Frank. He didn’t go from being someone’s right hand man (left hand man too) to being absolutely nothing with the flick of a light switch and a stupid fucking one-night stand with a hick bitch from North fucking Dakota. “I am going to discuss him whenever the hell I want Charlie, that’s practically my right, especially since-- whatever, fine.” He shakes his head. They’ve heard this song before. He doesn’t want to talk about Mandy McBitchface, sticking her fingers into Dennis and taking him all the way to practically Canada. Dennis can’t handle the fucking cold, and that stupid--

Okay, he doesn’t hate Mandy. Actually, he really likes her. She’s funny-- for a woman, at least-- and understands Dennis. Is patient with him, good to him, annoyingly, saintly good in a way Mac wanted to be to him. Could have been to him, if he’d stayed.

“Fuck,” Charlie says, pats him on the back as they go in to buy tickets for a new Marvel movie they’ll never get to see for the first time with Dennis. No weird commentary on the girl’s tits and hands stealing into his popcorn, but still. Another new memory without him. Another day spent driving solo, alone, like a wolf torn apart from its pack or something. God, he needs to stop watching the Discovery channel with Charlie. “You’re obsessed with that guy, you know?”

“I am not,” Mac says, but there’s no heat. He doesn’t call or text Dennis, the thought of it makes his hands want to fall off like the priests at St. Anthony’s said would happen if he jerked off too much. He misses him, okay? A lot. But he’s fucking pissed, hilariously angry, the type that makes him draw his knees in tight during late nights and scream, list out the things he can’t fucking stand about Dennis, the things he can’t fucking stand without Dennis.

They watch the movie and it’s bullshit. Mac resists the urge to take photos of the hot superhero chick for Dennis. Well, she’s straight people hot, anyway, all exaggerated lines and blonde hair to her ass. Mac scans the screen for hot guys instead and decides that Chris Pratt is kind of handsome. Not nearly quite as handsome as Dennis, he thinks, but good looking in a country boy kind of way. Whatever, he’s allowed to find other guys than Dennis attractive.

It’s been nearly half a year. He should be fine. He should be over Dennis, and he is, which drowns him with painfully familiar guilt, the type the people at his new gay-ass church say he shouldn’t feel but he does anyway, as one big fuck you to all the bad feelings swimming inside his chest, as a fuck you to the Dennis feelings he’s shoved down deep for almost two decades now.

He cries in the movie, a little, and Charlie either pretends not to notice or doesn't care. Mac dries his eyes with the scratchy napkins and eats way too much popcorn to placate himself. He should feel better. Dee’s brother left her, and she’s pretty much fine. Frank’s sort-of son ditched him, and he doesn’t give a shit. Mac can’t believe he’s thinking this, but he secretly resolves to be a little bit more like Frank.

“You wanna get dinner with us?” Charlie asks afterward, and fuck, Mac isn’t used to this weird sort of shit where Dee’s suddenly one of them. Where’s the fucking loyalty, where is the fucking status quo they’ve maintained (he can kiss Dennis, but never in front of the gang, and only when he’s pissed off, he can touch Dennis, but Dennis can push him away and pull him back whenever he feels the need to) for the past twenty goddamn years?

“No,” Mac says petulantly. “I have to workout.”

Charlie pats Mac’s arm, his tiny hands warm on his bicep. “Good to see you, Mac Attack.”

“Yeah, you too, man,” Mac says. He watches as Charlie clambers into the passenger seat of Dee’s idling car, sips the last of the syrupy sweet soda he and Charlie shared. Old time’s habit, before they were bankrolled by Frank’s insane amounts of dirty money, before Dennis and Dee and everything Reynolds entrenched his life. Back when being gay was just a thought and never a burning reality, never an ugly possibility.

He goes to church instead. Prays, loudly, like he’s drowning and there’s no one there to save him. Whatever, Mac thinks, driving home with his windows down to escape the fog. He’d rather be burning in Hell than stuck in this miserable, soul-drenching purgatory. 

* * *

The kids have a dog now. A puppy, which Frank’s eaten before. Reluctantly, and it’s not like he _knew_. The menu had been in Japanese and he’d been totally wasted. Anyways. He’s proud of them. Deandra and his Charlie, all grown up, with a dog and everything. The gay one, too, even if he’s a downer as ever.

They let Frank stay on the couch whenever he wants. Charlie’s learning how to read, which means Frank doesn’t even need his glasses anymore. That’s great; he’ll be swimming in babes. Pondy would be so jealous. 

Life is good. Life is great. He doesn’t miss the Dennis kid all that bad. Okay, he sort of does. He had fun with him, at least. Lots of good schemes. Pimped him out once, too, if he remembers right, and that had ended up okay. 

Having a grandson is nice, too. Deandra’s baby for the tr--transgender one, the one who used to be a man or whatever, Frank doesn’t really give a shit nor understand all the things young kids say they are these days, but that’s not his grandkid. Brian is, though. Barbara would be rolling in her grave if she knew that she was someone’s grandma, he thinks.

Maybe he’ll go and visit. Or not. He doesn’t know, he’s getting pretty old and the flight attendants on planes are getting uglier and uglier. Their Gang has pretty much fractured irreparably, but maybe that’s a good thing. 

Whatever, Frank thinks. He goes to Dee and Charlie’s place for dinner and only kicks the dog under the table once. It’s pretty polite of him. Everyone’s trying their best.

“Dennis e-mailed me this apology,” the gay one says, rocking back and forth in his chair like it’s electric or something. 

“What are you gonna do about it?” Charlie says. He passes Frank the salt before he even asks, and Frank thinks, that’s my boy. Except he accidentally says it. Oh well.

“I don’t know,” the gay one frowns. “It’s been almost a year.”

“You guys,” Deandra says. “I propose we don’t talk about it, at least for tonight. Can we, can we just not discuss Dennis? Do you think he sits around the kitchen table telling Brian Jr. just how much he misses all of us?”

“Well, _no_ \--” the gay one begins.

“We have to live our own lives, Mac.” Deandra says, her eyes evil blue.

“Yeah,” Frank agrees. That’s why he divorced Barbara. And maybe a little change isn’t a bad thing.

“Hey,” Charlie says, looking at the calendar. “It _has_ been a year, guys.”

“Oh well,” Dee says. “Who wants to get drunk?”

Frank’s never said no to booze. They wander up onto the roof and throw beer bottles onto the street and for the first time in forever, the kids actually look happy. Sad and tattooed and dressed in shorts in November, but happy. Free. 

He’d never say it, but he’s proud.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again! Pls feel free to comment and tell me how you're doing/what fandoms you're into aside from Sunny/ how winter is going for you :) <3


End file.
